History
A Little Bit of History
Welcome to Heart’s Content! You’ve landed in one of the most historic communities in Newfoundland & Labrador. Our story goes back to 1612 when John Guy of Cupids came this way, calling it an “excellent good place for fishing.”. Over the next 300 years Heart’s Content grew into a thriving community, filling up with fishermen, plantation owners, businesses, churches, and schools, then became a major shipbuilding center, railway town and trans-shipping port. But what affected it most was the landing of the trans-Atlantic cable in 1866, an event that changed the world and gave Heart’s Content international status as the first gateway of communication between Europe and North America.
The cable station workers reshaped Heart’s Content into an industrial town with new layers of culture, lifestyle and social class. They brought new technology, but also art, literature, music and organized sports, producing a community unlike any other in Newfoundland. How an international cable station found a place in a traditional out port culture is an intriguing piece of our history.
The cable station gave way to new technology in 1965 but Heart’s Content today preserves the landscape of a cable town, centered around the station, a Provincial Historic Site and candidate for consideration by UNESCO for World Heritage status. It’s the focal point of the Registered Heritage District, which you’ll find sprinkled with historical buildings dating from the 1860s, including company-built houses, fraternal lodges, the former Heyfield United Church (now a Regional Arts Centre) and the Methodist schoolhouse.
Take a walk around and feel bits of history of a town as it was over a hundred years ago!
